Rwanda: Just South of the Mountains of the Moon

As it turned out, our landing in Africa’s most populous country was perfectly smooth.  The young driver was already waiting, arranged by warzone specialist friend Connie, who has a whole network of transport contacts on the DRC-Rwanda border, overseen by a taxi-lord called Bienvenue.  Despite looking barely out of his teens, and despite sitting the furthest possible distance away from his steering wheel, he was a safe and charming chauffeur, and we got along more or less fine with a mix of broken French-English.

Nothing like having your first stop being a genocide museum.  But so it was.  My bags received the most rigorous and intimate inspection at the entrance - almost as if to say, 'do you realise the weight of what you have come to see, and can we trust you, or anyone else, in this world of ours?'.  It’s hard to do any of it justice – the extremely complex history behind the genocide, the immense scale of the killings which took as many as a million lives in a hundred days, and the extreme and almost inexplicable tragedy.  The graves in the memorial gardens hold the remains of over 250,000 individuals, and new remains are still added on a regular basis, as they are uncovered, close to twenty years after the genocide took place.   I spent a long, shocking, time there. 

David Mugiranezi

Age: 10

Favorite sport: Football

Enjoyed: Making people laugh

Dream: Becoming a doctor

Last Words: "Mama, UNAMIR will come for us"

Cause of Death: Tortured to death

Aurore Kirezi

Age: 2

Favourite drink: Cow's milk

Favourite game: Hide and seek games with her big brother

Behaviour: Very talkative

Cause of Death: Burnt alive at the Gikondo Chapel

"When I am at the market, in the midst of a large crowd, I always think I might just find my brothers"

Rose, 10

 Despite some academic and historical knowledge of conflict in the Great Lakes region, this visit raised so many questions for me, including about how a society can possible recover from such a devastating trauma.  How does one even broach the topic with locals? In the days to follow, I saw memorial signs all over the countryside. The visitors at the museum were incredibly attentive – most appeared to be from other African countries, as well as some Rwandans.  There is also, of course, the question of how history is constructed in particular ways.  The museum narrative posits that Rwanda was harmoniously united and at peace prior to Belgian colonization and the spread of Christianity – an hypothesis which seems deceptively simplistic, and accredits too much agency to the colonial powers in shaping ethnic difference. 

 As we departed Kigali, the heavy torrential rain began, and stayed with us all the way to Musanze and beyond.  The country is spotlessly clean – one of the markers, perhaps, of Kagame’s authoritarian and disciplinarian leadership.  We reached Kinigi, at the foot of the extinct Sibyinyo volcano,  and on the edge of the national park, in the late afternoon.  The guesthouse was perfect – simple  and no frill, but clean, tidy and spacious, with great service from the manager on duty.  The rain subsided briefly before continuing at full force for another 4 hours!  Connie arrived from Goma after dark, with one of the taxi-lord’s minions, under a sizeable umbrella.  We caught up over some chewy chicken and rice with a glorious groundnut sauce. 

Connie moved from Afghanistan to Goma about a year ago. There, just across the border, which is about an hour and a half’s drive away, the M23 rebels surrendered just three weeks ago, in the wake of a rare offensive by the UN and government forces .  There is substantial evidence for Rwandan government support for the M23, reportedly comprised of mostly Tutsi, who had amassed some $2m worth of equipment and arms, allegedly to counter Hutu extremists who fled Rwanda after the genocide.  General Bosco Ntaganda, a warlord involved with multiple militia groups and mining interests over the past decade, including the M23, handed himself over to the International Criminal Court earlier this year.  He apparently drove to the US Embassy in Kigali under the cover of a baseball cap, and no doubt received a cold shoulder when he tried to get an unscheduled appointment with the Ambassador – until they realized who he was. He will face multiple charges of war crimes at the ICC, including mass rape, murder, torture and the forced conscription of child soldiers.  Other armed groups remain at large, and as FA reports, "their alliances, leadership structures and even names keep shifting". 

In other news, Goma’s appeal is much increased once you subtract the M23's shelling activities:  not only is Lake Kivu idyllic, but Connie has a local mani-pedi guy called Vanilla.  But, back to Rwanda. In the rainy season, you need to get everything, or almost everything, done before about 1pm.  The very early morning was breathtaking, with cool and dewy views over clear fields and misty mountains on the horizon.  The park HQ was just a few hundred metres away, and despite being low season, there were already multiple groups of tourists gathering for hiking and silverback gorilla trips.   All of the options are very expensive, and the Rwandan parks authority must generate a tremendous income each year.  There is a community conservation scheme in action too, which channels some funds and employment to the heavily populated areas immediately adjacent to the park. 

 We spent several hours in the capable hands of our guide Placide (you can’t beat the names in this place, right?!) tiptoeing along very muddy paths into the tall bamboo highland forests which are home not only to the gorillas, whose populations are recovering beautifully, but also to the endangered Golden Monkeys.  Encroached upon by dense human populations, deforestation and armed conflict, their diminishing habitat seems to be their largest threat.

These creatures are all about fresh bamboo shoots.  They break and munch, break and munch, jump, break and munch, jump, jump, munch and so it goes on.  This time of year, the juiciest shoots are up at the canopy level, so it’s quite hard to get a good view of the monkeys, but we were lucky to have them come down to ground level after about an hour.  Due to the frequent visitors, they are habituated to humans and very relaxed.   We spent a fantastic hour or so observing a group of about 20.  

After some mint tea at a nearby lodge, Connie and I went in search of two mini-lakes and a tea plantation, between Musanze and Gisenyi.  We didn’t achieve much but we did get a good walk and gather a substantial group of excited children who seemed dead set on following us around no matter how far we continued.  To get home we hopped in a minibus taxi with a church group in full song, though sadly most of them disembarked not long afterwards.  Once back in Musanze we braved the local motorbike-taxis for the 8km trip back to the guesthouse.

Sunday brought an extended rural excursion (some would call it ‘getting lost’) to the twin lakes of Ruhondo and Burera, along never-ending and windy dirt roads through dozens of beautiful hills and valleys, all the sides heavily planted and terraced.  It’s difficult to imagine what the indigenous vegetation looked like, before the arrival of exotics and before rapid population growth that has necessitated extensive subsistence farming.  Anxious to please, both our driver (yes, yet another of the taxi-lord Bienvenue’s crew) and all the local peasants took the approach of affirming at all times that we were on the correct road(s), despite not having a clue.

Four hours later, we did eventually make it back to the main road, having survived 4x4 terrain in a sedan, and after taking on board some advice (and a passenger) from a pedestrian whose jacket was appropriately labelled ‘Operation Joint Endeavour’.  We stopped for an enormous grilled potato on the side of the road, and I bought a kilogram of delicious fresh peas to take back to Jo’burg. Connie hopped in a cab heading for Goma with two guys who turned out to be UN Afghans (of course).   And I ventured back to Johannesburg with the peas.  I can strongly recommend my new recipe with mint and orange.

Uganda Tea Bags and Kampala’s Lord Mayor

 Entebbe airport, unlike Johannesburg, has free WiFi.  And the speeds are good - at least when the waiting lounge is empty.   When my flight is delayed, I realize that there is no information desk (at all) in departures, but for a Googler that’s minor compared to WiFi. 

The airport, fresh from the ‘80s,  houses multiple small duty free shops, all of which stock exactly the same produce, but - wait for it - at different prices.  So for exactly the same Uganda Tea Bags you could either pay $4 or $6, or any other price within a $3 dollar range.  Unique market forces at play, clearly, and more physical exercise for the more discerning customer who is willing to walk from store to store to find the best deal.  No names mentioned.

I am supposed to be flying Air Uganda, but on arrival they insist that I check in at Rwandair.  Ok, mix’n’match.  Then, having been informed a week earlier that my Air Uganda flight was going to be pushed forward, they then announce that the Rwandair flight will be delayed.    “Ten to Five”, they say over the intercom, “Ten to Five”.  The prospect of another 8 hours at the airport is far from thrilling, but about half an hour later I realize that they mean “Ten Two Five, Ten Two Five”,  as in Ten Twenty Five, which is thankfully only an hour or so away.

In other airport observations, the Rotary Club of Entebbe has a long line of see-through charity donation boxes against a wall.  Rotary Clubs, whilst American in origin, are always the dead giveaway of a British postcolony, and seem to be one of the longest lasting postcolonial institutions (possibly with the most elderly members too).  Meanwhile a military aircraft with a US flag on its tail has just landed on the runway overlooking Lake Victoria.  A group of UN peacekeepers from Bangladesh are waiting inside, all crisply kitted out.  Entebbe is the hub for all peacekeeper movement in and out of the troubled eastern DRC.

Back in Kampala, the city’s Lord Mayor, who is a major opposition figure to President Museveni, was arrested a few days ago, apparently for no good reason, and yesterday there was a strong police presence outside the city court house, where I saw an insignificant crowd gathering to jubilate or protest, depending on the outcome.  Last night the mayor was acquitted, but by 6am this morning when my driver collected me, he had been re-arrested.   Indeed, familiar themes from another country to the south: the utility of harassment and the instrumentalization of disorder.

Said driver, who talks non-stop about local politics all the way the airport, despite the early hour and despite having had only about 4 hours sleep, tells me that there are laws around public gatherings, and that any planned gathering greater than three or four needs to be reported to the police in advance.

The city reminds me of Harare – albeit with an extra dose of jungle, traffic congestion, pollution and homophobia.   There are rather a lot of laidback police and security guards around, wielding AKs, sometimes whilst lying on the grass.  Yet people are relaxed and it’s far safer than somewhere like Johannesburg, despite the increased building security checks following the Westgate terrorist attack in Kenya. 

  

Eventually I board a two-prop 30-seater Rwandair plane, welcomed by possibly the most articulate, pleasant and polite steward I’ve seen in the past two years of international travel. And he warns us sincerely that our descent to Kigali, during the height of the tropical rainy season, is likely to be a bit nerve wracking. 

Sandton Expedition, Empire Exhibition: The San come to Sandton c.2013

“Let us not feel that they are being unduly revealed to the public gaze for purpose of private gain.  Let us rather feel as they feel, that they are working for a home, a land, and for the perpetuation of their race.”  Donald Bain, Bushman Exhibitor, Empire Exhibition speech, Johannesburg 1936 (R. Gordon 1999:270)

To start with, there was something about the publicity that seemed odd. “Kalahari Odyssey”, it shouted.  No, not a safari trip but “fifteen members of the [San/Bushman] Kruiper family join [eco-adventurer Patricia] Glyn to recount [an] unforgettable journey”.  And to be held in a church in central Sandton, to boot.  Fifteen #Khomani San from the Kgalagadi in Sandton? Tickets being sold online via Computicket? Most academics or anthropologists could only dream of having events popular enough to be sold on Computicket.  So what was all this about?

I went in search of deliciously problematic politics, and indeed found them.  When I pulled in at the very sizeable Rosebank Union Church, the carpark was already packed.  A Tuesday evening, mind you.  I had to scout around for a parking like a Khwe scouts for an increasingly rare mangetti tree in the Caprivi sandveld.   And there they were: scores of Johannesburg’s white middle classes, myself now included, swaddled in jackets and coats, filling the entrance hall.  And there they were: a handful of small-statured ‘authentic’ Bushmen (the Kruipers’ preferred nomenclature apparently), manning several tables of jewellery and crafts, wearing only traditional skin loincloths at the start of a Highveld winter. Two of the loinclothed men were squatting next to an electric heater, almost oblivious to the crowds, whilst others held blankets to their shoulders. Already a provocative Twitter stream was going off in my head: “Exactly how is this going to be different from the Empire Exhibition of 1936?”

I don’t know the eco-adventurer Glyn, but understand she had a successful career in South African broadcast media.  Indeed, she is an excellent speaker, fluid, eloquent, evocative in her descriptions, and had an excellent slide deck with supporting visuals (notwithstanding the Springbok rugby ad footage from the early ‘90s, a la ‘Gods Must Be Crazy’, which is enough to make any anthropologist squirm uncomfortably in their seat for its exploitative stereotyping, but which made a good half of the audience laugh out loud).  Glyn talked us through her two months of luxury camping with the San/Bushman #Khomani leader Dawid Kruiper, at his behest.   We saw photographs of large water drums, tents, kitchen sinks and other such conveniences. Before his death, Kruiper wanted to return to places in the Kgalagadi that he had not visited in 50 years, together with his children and grandchildren, before his health failed him.  It seems to have been a reciprocal arrangement – in my interpretation, he got to take his family on an expenses-paid trip to significant places in their troubled history, whilst Glyn got to publish a new book and boost her personal brand with the ‘Bushman Mystique’.

Some of Glyn’s findings indeed contribute something new to our record and understanding of San history, notably the little-known Khomani role in bolstering Nama resistance against the Germans during South West Africa’s (Namibia’s) 1904-1908 wars, deep in the Kalahari desert.  Kruiper was even able to lead her to battle detritus and graves, powerful evidence of his intimate knowledge of landscape and oral history.  But more striking was Glyn’s lack of reflexivity about the politics of her engagement with this much-feted clan, and the romanticisation of a community actually full of internal strife. She walked us through the dispossession of the Kruiper ancestors from their land, recanted and criticized the European ‘voyeurism’ that led to the Bushman displays at the Empire Exhibition of 1936 (“shipped off like a circus act to perform”, she said), and again later at Kagga Kama in the Cedarberg, and one or two other farms where they constituted, and in some cases agreed to be, a sort of living zoo.  And yet how was this night in Sandton, just two weeks ago, any different?   

Glyn could easily have given her talk without the Kruipers’ presence. Their images filled the majority of photographs and film footage throughout the presentation anyway. She herself admitted that the Kruipers were the evening’s drawcard, “the people you’re really here to see”. As another attendee familiar with San affairs later commented, if Glyn felt that the Kruipers needed to be present, was it necessary for them to be clad in loin cloths, beads and skins, in the same way as they used to be presented for the gaze of the tourists and ‘voyeurs’ who visited Kagga Kama in search of ‘authenticity’? Did Glyn fall into the same trap as her predecessors - despite her awareness of these problematic identity politics – or was her approach deliberate, for the benefit of her listeners and ultimately herself? Or, did the Kruipers perhaps insist on attending? 

There were apparently some 600 in the audience that night.  I looked around and could count only 3 black people.  Later I saw a handful more.  I am fascinated by these demographics.  Why this absolute white fascination, this obsession, with the ‘authentic Bushman’?   For there are many other ethnic groups in South Africa that also have traditions and customs that are ‘exotic’ and/or ‘dying’.   Is it to do with connection to wilderness, that the urban white middle classes feel they have lost?  As Glyn puts it, “What we’ve lost and what we’re trying to relearn”?  Or is it simply part of how white southern Africans have substituted relationships with blacks, with relationships with ‘untouched’ landscapes, per the analysis of anthropologist David Hughes for the case of Zimbabwe?  And do whites project Bushmen/San to be part of that landscape, thanks to their alleged ‘primitivism’, thanks to being ‘harmless people’, per Elizabeth Marshall, in other words, no threat to white identity in post-apartheid South Africa?  Last but certainly not least, how did the Kruiper family see this rather extraordinary Sandton expedition working to their advantage?  For certainly they do not unknowingly engage in what some anthropologists call ‘strategic essentialism’. 

The metaphor for the entire evening was captured by Glyn’s adoption, on one of several visits to the Kgalagadi, of a neglected, suffering, malnourished, half-dead specimen of a dog, of which we were presented with several photographs as evidence.  Said dog was then magically and triumphantly brought out on stage, now collared and in pristine middle-class condition, along with the mostly-naked and in some cases bare-breasted Bushmen.  A pity President Zuma wasn’t present to share his take on this extraordinary conglomeration and the politics of pet-keeping.  Glyn has adopted the Kruipers as her cause, in the well-intentioned hope that she can boost their chances of survival in an era, now spanning over a century, that has arguably disenfranchised them more systematically than any other group on the continent.  The question is whether prolonging and promulgating an essentialist, romanticized depiction of San identity will help them survive. The Kruipers do not, of course, lack agency in all this.  Their elders are savvy enough to know that ‘authentic San’ sell.  They closeted away their (real) day clothes, their realities of alcoholism, violence and communal fractions, and made ready for a windfall.  And on this winter’s night in Sandton, they sold particularly well.

Pumpkin and Drankwinkels

Van Zylsrus is at the end of the road.  Well, at the end of two roads, to be precise.   Kind of like a one-block settlement at the end of two roads. “Relax in Van Zylsrus” pronounces the welcome sign.  The Van Zylsrus Hotel is tightly sandwiched between two drankwinkels (Afrikaans for bottle stores, which sounds to me even more like a hangover than babelaas). Unsurprisingly we are met by one of the local drunks on arrival, as well as a variety of dogs of indeterminate breed and ownership.  The hotel is clean and comfy, rooms with automated air-freshener clustered around some artsy courtyards and a pleasant leafy garden.  Afternoon rugby is about to begin, and the bar is filling up with local patrons and some meercat researchers.  There are not enough of them, though, to make much of a difference to a slow autumn Saturday.

Earlier in the day, we passed through a half-street village in the middle of nowhere called Askham, where the Afrikaans manager of the local co-op invited us in for a coffee, in amidst the paint, fertilizer and horse bridlery.  She loves it here: she glows, she is full of energy, she sees beauty in the stark camel-thorns and the endless dust.  She is supersize in body and spirit, joyful, unpretentious, and content with her lot in life.  She confirms (or reassures?) that there are thirty white people in the area, and that they see each other at church once a fortnight. She rattles off the list of annual parties and dances.  Oh, to be a fly-on-the-wall at the Askham Valentine’s Dance.  She almost drools with delight and anticipation telling us about the menu that we can expect at the Van Zylsrus Hotel, in particular the pumpkin which, I later find out, is so sugary and translucent with butter that it is virtually jam.   

I go running and think about all the strange places I’ve been running in the past year (like Bandra Bombay, Gairezi Zimbabwe and Tooting London). It is almost new moon and my uterus aches. I calculate that if I’d lived in Mary Moffat’s time, albeit not in the Kalahari, I might well have had 13 children by now, including allowance for some fallow years in between and perhaps a death or two.  

Gravel beneath my feet, and my shoes make shadows in the late light – like hobnail boots, like wagon wheels, like hobnail boots, like wagon wheels, round they go.  The road is much more uneven under one’s own feet than it is under car wheels, of course.  Like so many things in life, one’s perspective shifts with proximity.  Uneven, undulating, coarse, pushed here and there into little sand peaks, this road is harder to navigate with only my own body-fuel. It is so silent that I stop to listen under a huge void of cloudless sky. Thud of own heart, gravel crunch pause, at least four bird species at different distances. A horse trap passes me, driven by three young country boys, perched side by side.  The trap moves strangely quietly and when I next look over my shoulder it is gone without trace, like maybe it was imagined.  I am nearly back at Van Zylsrus as the sun sets.  Three 4x4s rush past and their dust envelopes the orange.

At dinner I sample the remarkable pumpkin dish whose reputation precedes it. We are the only diners.  There are red-checked tablecloths. The wide-ranging playlist brings us everything from Phantom of the Opera to Belinda Carlisle.  There is a substantial collection of kitsch Christian crosses on the wall above the piano.  We are fussed over by two pretty teenaged waitresses, who double-check every detail.  The food takes its time, as it does in out-of-the-way places.  The girls flutter in and out, doing god-knows-what.  The food finally arrives and it’s very tasty.  Even two delicious gluten-free vegetarian quiches (specially prepared ahead of my arrival – in fact they were already proffering them to me at lunchtime), piping hot, accompanied by green beans smothered in white sauce, and the syrupy pumpkin.  Think of it as a sort of vegetable extension of the koeksister family.  Just in case I didn’t have enough sugar, I round off the meal with a Dom Pedro, that favourite of southern African treats, Kahlua mixed with vanilla icecream in an alcoholic shake that tickles both the adult and child within.  As for which Dom (or was it Don?) Pedro inspired this drink - and when and where - that remains shrouded in mystery.

Salt, Sand and the Heart of the Matter

More on the 2500km road trip.  After Augrabies we headed north towards the Kgalakgadi transfrontier national park, into country with no phone reception and one other car.  To use one of Larry Page’s favourite expressions, this was ‘uncomfortably exciting’ for someone who’s now sadly conditioned to email-and-SMS-on-tap.  The park itself is busier, with visitors converging from all three countries (Namibia, Botswana and SA).  The more-trafficked part was frequented by older-generation white South African 4x4 roadtripper couples with over-equipped vehicles, if not trailers as well.  (Thinking back a few years, the same breed would sometimes show up at campsites in Caprivi with the entire contents of a large house.)

We carefully followed instructions to find our meeting point, cutting it fine in terms of timing, but with a few spare minutes to enjoy yet another rice cake with avocado.  P. knows all about the rice cakes by now.  Two San and Mier guides from !Xaus appeared in a Toyota and accompanied us into the desert wilderness.  In these parts mileage is measured in dunes rather than kilometres, making the lodge 90 dunes from Tweerivier and 34 dunes from Kamqua.   34 dunes is about an hour’s worth of travel.  P. did a fine job of tackling the road, since driving in thick sand is no easy feat.  Only once did our guide have to take the wheel to conquer the largest orange dune at high speed, after which he announced in his singsong accent: “There’s nothing-wrong with this Hilux of yours…”

 

Traversing the dunes is well worth the effort.  The lodge is spectacularly perched on the edge of a giant salt pan, a kilometer in diameter.  You don’t grasp the scale of it until you realize that the dot about two-thirds across is in fact a stately oryx.  The pan is almost perfectly round, but for a small dimple which makes it more like a heart, giving the place its name, !Xaus, which is also said to reflect the spirit of healing and dignity brought by the restoration of indigenous land rights.   

At the start of Brody’s documentary Aftermath, #Khomani leader Dawid Kruiper describes what happened on the day that the land claim was formally signed, suggesting that even nature recognizes justice:

“The day Mbeki came with the helicopter and black car…there [were] lovely loose clouds, here a cloud, there a cloud, and the clouds began to speak…When they speak there, then they speak here…and from the top a faint rain already came. When the rain began to fall hard, the helicopter rose.  Within two days there were pools of water between the dunes.  After 30 dry years, on that specific day, it rained.  Those years when we were forced out were sad.  Then the land was given back, signed for.  And those bad things they did to us, we forgave them. That is why the blessing of rains came that day.”

 

Nor was this rain was not shortlived.  According to other interviewees as well, it was plentiful and extensive.  #Khomani children who’d never seen more than small quantities of drinking water bathed in it for the first time – and white farmers’ houses near the river were in danger of flooding. No rain during our autumn visit, but water is drawn from below the surface of the giant pan.  On a more trivial note than justice, it’s so salty and mineral-rich that it made my skin look ten times better than Lancome could ever aspire to.  I even filled two bottles with this miracle tonic to bring home, in the hope that I could prolong the ‘spa effect’.

The politics of the land claim, of community and identity, are obscure during such a short visit.  It was difficult to get any real sense of what was going on. ‘Shifts’ of people come to the lodge to preside in a ‘traditional village’ where they make crafts to sell, mostly jewellery.   This construction of Bushman-ness made me feel awkward – admittedly I’m over-sensitive to the identity politics, but others would argue that it is no different than any other ‘tourist village’, and a viable socio-economic strategy.  Our San guide grew up speaking Afrikaans, reinforcing what filmmaker Brody has documented among the elders: that the #Khomani language N/u had been strategically ‘buried’ during the process of land dispossession and assimilation into farm labour, because, amongst other things, it was not in #Khomani interests to speak a language which would brand them as ‘lowly Bushmen’ rather than ‘coloureds’.  Brody’s films provide a rich set of testimonies which explore over a decade’s worth of highs and lows, from justice and joy, to community power struggles, financial mismanagement and alcoholism.

Thanks to its remoteness and shelter from light pollution, the lodge is soon to qualify as an official international ‘Dark Sky Place’.  At night, the stars are a tremendous scatter of white sand granules.  You can admire them through the telescope, if the telescope is not being slept on by the tame guinea fowl.  The red dunes nestle amazing biodiversity, including oryx, springbok, wildebeest, ostrich, jackal, tortoise, kori bustard birds, and 9 lions recently recaptured after they disappeared over the fence into neighbouring farmlands for some fine dining. 

The park sees an extreme temperature range: 47 degrees Celsius in summer and -10 in the winter.  On our second day, a wind picked up at lunchtime and blew tirelessly through the afternoon and most of the night.  By early next morning the temps had dropped to 6 degrees.  Outdoor winters on the sandveld are not for the fainthearted. There is little protection in this vast and open environment, so going to bed between four walls was a true luxury.   At last light, on return from our game drive, we catch a glimpse of the silhouette of a male lion not far from our room: a little jolt to remind us about the other custodians of territory round here.

The Road to the Interior, and Other Missionary Wives

P. won two nights at the furthest-away-possible lodge in a raffle.  And so we drove all the way from the edgy city of gold to the Kgalakgadi (the more authentic name for Kalahari) which is tucked into a curious border indentation that you didn’t even know South Africa had.  When I say far, I mean far.  A 2500km round trip.  By some stroke of serendipity this lodge is on the land of the Khomani San, the same people who  lost, mapped, and reclaimed that land in a process documented by anthropologist and filmmaker Hugh Brody, whose New College lecture was the first inspiration for my graduate research.

En route, Kuruman is an unlikely place for the most prolific oasis in the southern hemisphere.  20 million litres of water dribble out of the rocks every day in an unassuming fashion, giving life to thousands of fish, including the largest koi I’ve ever seen.  Here in 1820, a few kilometres from the spring, the Scottish missionary Robert Moffat settled and built an outpost for God.

 The mission houses the oldest European-style buildings north of the Gariep/Orange River. In the late afternoon it holds an unexpected beauty and peace.  This was an ambitious missionary: the church was built to seat 800 and, in the scrublands of the Kalahari desert, the stone walls stood uncovered for 7 years before Moffat found timber long enough to complete the roof.  The beams eventually came from hundreds of kilometers away in the Marico River valley, with the blessing of Moselekatse/Mzilikazi, the Matabele Chief.  Today the church has a postbox-red door, a clay-dung floor in the original style, and a sign that politely asks visitors not to ring the bell.

                                  

In the nearby graveyard, lost in the service of King, Empire and God, a jumble of Boer War soldiers, missionaries, long-suffering wives and dead infants, some of whom lived only briefly.  Birth, death, the succumbing of spirit and heart – all this happened here, including the birth of Howard Unwin Moffat, Southern Rhodesia’s second premier (whose government passed the 1930 Land Apportionment Act, which in a nutshell was one of the ultimate causes of Zimbabwe’s turmoil of the last decade) and the falling-in-love of that other famous missionary and explorer, Livingstone.  In the aftermath of a lion attack, and no doubt some realisations about the fragility of the human condition, Livingstone succumbed to the care and affections of the eldest Moffat daughter, who actually survived the Kalahari to adulthood.  She was called Mary, like her mother.  Not that she had much competition, nor he many options. He proposed to her in the garden now dedicated to Mary senior, ‘and other missionary wives’.

To the Kuruman mission came the printing press that marked the start of a momentous sea change - the spread of Christianity across the sub-continent in a short century or so, which both facilitated and resisted the expansion of Empire.  In the 1850s, Moffat translated and printed a thousand copies of the Old Testament, the very first time this had been done in an African language, seTswana. Half a ton in weight, and transported painstakingly by oxwagon hundreds of kilometres from Algoa Bay on the Namibian Atlantic coast, it sits dull yet resolute in one of the schoolroom buildings, the disruptive Internet of its time.

Reads one of the placards: “It continued to produce Spelling Books and Hymn Books but its chief glory was the Bible, home-made from the start, created out of a language which had no [written] grammar or dictionary, and printed and published on the veld” 

From Kuruman we drove through some of the most extensive manganese and iron ore mining sites in the world to Upington.  From there, along the Gariep (Orange) River valley, where we wound through canal-fed vineyards (yes, vineyards!) and Afrikaner farm stores filled with dried fruit, nuts, tea, rusks. Kakamas was originally a colony for poor white farmers in the aftermath of drought and rinderpest in the 1890s, founded and regulated by the Dutch Reformed Church.  They were only granted property rights in the 1960s.  Here and there are dirt side roads simply signposted with an arrow saying ‘Namibia’.

The Augrabies National Park is a stunning landscape of melting coffee-icecream rock with an almighty surge of water cutting through it, carving a canyon of substantial proportions.  The powerful Augrabies waterfall plunges into a pool that is 120 metres deep.  All around, the lilacs and khakis are reminiscent of Namibia, which is but a hop skip and jump away.  One needs several days to explore, so I hope to return.   More soon on the rest of the trip.

These Zulus, These Buddhists: Temple, Veld & Empire

According to an upmarket resident-guide, some eighty percent of the 25,000 visitors to Isandlwana – the site of the famous Anglo-Zulu battle - are British.  And of the remainder, less than ten percent are black South Africans.  This in itself raises all sorts of interesting questions about the history and politics of memory. Why, for example, are the British quite so fascinated by this greatest defeat in the history of Empire, analyzing and re-analysing its reasons; whereas for today’s Zulus, this battle is apparently insignificant in the context of other dramatic upheavals that took place in the 19^th century under kings like Shaka, Dingane and Cetshwayo?

Isandlwana is a prominent sandstone outcrop that can be seen from the surrounding hills and valleys, many kilometres away.  The tall white stone cairns that mark the fallen dead are scattered liberally across the hillside - nearly five thousand were slaughtered that day, but the fallen Zulu were taken away, so the  cairns (originally over 290 of them) only mark the piles of British dead.  The 22nd August 1879 was a new moon day; like many other cultures (including those who practice Ashtanga yoga), the Zulus observed certain lunar customs.  It was a day on which Zulu impi were not supposed to fight.  Uncannily, the same day saw a partial eclipse of the sun to underwrite all that was already auspicious or foreboding about the timing and location of the battle.

On a clear day the cairns can be seen from afar.  The British badly underestimated the capacity and strategy of the Zulu army, thinking amongst other things that, like the Xhosa, the Zulu would likely use guerilla tactics.  A highly disciplined force of 25,000 men who could march-run barefoot at 60 miles a day in sweltering heat and led by a commander aged over 70, nogal, was not exactly what they were expecting.

We learned on these ‘battlefield tours’ so much about individual British soldiers yet relatively little about their Zulu counterparts. This tourism in many ways hinges on postcolonial romanticism about Empire’s values of heroism, resilience and courage – disregarding lesser details such as an unprovoked and aggressive British incursion into Zulu territory.  The focus on British individuals continues the bias that imbued so many colonial history books – that white men were dynamic individuals who were the agents of history-making, whereas women and natives were the anonymous recipients of change.

Not only memory is interesting here, but memorialization.  The memorials are starkly different: there are a variety of monuments to the British erected over the years at Islandlwana and Rorke’s Drift, but only two or three monuments created to commemorate the Zulu dead.  The Zulu monument at Islandlwana is perhaps more a work of art than anything else – a striking ‘traditional’ bravery necklace of quills and lion claws, writ large in earth-hue metal, in the shape of the ‘bull horn’ formation, the military enclosure tactic developed by Shaka.

We stayed in the old farmhouse (c.1940) at Fugitives’ Drift in the shade of grapefruit trees, under a three-quarter moon, vying with encroaching weeds to use the outside shower.  With Islandlwana too in the far distance, it was suitably atmospheric.  Fugitives Drift is so named for the two British fugitive-soldiers who met their deaths by the flooded Buffalo river as they attempted to save the Queen’s colours (the symbolic flag of regimental pride and allegiance to Victoria) after fleeing the corpse-strewn hillside of Isandlwana.  They stood for all the old-fashioned valour and fortitude of Empire, the type that reminds me of Scott of Antarctica and more latterly the college rowing clubs in Cambridge. 

So where do the Buddhists come into all this?  Well they didn’t make it to the veld of Isandlwana, but they did make it to veld of Bronkhorstpruit which is 50km east of Pretoria, and where J. and I visited last weekend.  Believe it or not, Bronkhorstspruit is home to the largest Buddhist temple, Nan Hua Temple, in the southern hemisphere.  The site was established in 1992 by the Taiwanese Fo Guang Shan Buddhist Order to promote Buddhism on the African continent.  There is a resident community of monks and nuns, one of whom told me off for brushing my hands along the scented lavender rows.  I guess she thought I was (rather violently) trying to pick it.

 People of all colours and from all walks of life visit the temple complex.  To that extent, it is a more South African experience than most other excursions one could choose.  At lunch we enjoyed a vegetarian buffet at the meagre sum of 30 rand per person, served on saucer-sized plates to foster reflection on greed.  Diners sit at slim bench-tables, all facing in the same direction, and are encouraged to eat in silence, whilst reflecting on the prayerful eating guidelines boldly displayed above on the wall.  We sat in the back row with some of the kitchen workers who have mastered the art of piling voluminous loads of noodles into the saucers.  It’s a fuss-free and functional affair, and about a hundred diners were in and out of the hall in under 40 minutes.

From there we went on to the sleepy village of Cullinan, famed for its diamond mine and the discovery of the largest diamond in the world - yup, over half a kilogram. The stone was bought by the (recently defeated Boer) Transvaal government and presented to King Edward as a birthday prezzie c. 1905, before parts of it were later incorporated into the Crown Jewels.  And this only 25 years or so after the Zulu army decimated the British at Isandlwana.   Could things have been different? The Boers aside, more twists and ironies of Empire as visions of Zuma’s five wives rise before me… each wearing a 120 gram diamond.